And in crime-news news:

There’s no way @7NewsAustralia thought they could post this with the comments off and not have anyone say something.

Is this clip farming? pic.twitter.com/ADp8nx9jfV

— What’s News!? (@Whats_Newsss) April 21, 2025

I have to say, I didn’t see that coming. 

Via Rod Dreher.

Consider this an open thread. Share ye links and bicker.

Via Muldoon in the comments – and the pages of Psychology Today – the evaporating standards of “affirmative psychotherapy”:

Sharp-eyed readers may have registered the seeming absence of curiosity, of enquiry – say, regarding very common causes of the phenomenon in question. Readers may also wish to ponder the inevitable tensions between affirmation and investigation – and to place bets on which will be dispensed with in favour of the other. In this Yes, You Are Napoleon school of psychotherapy, where the unwell must always be told whatever they want to hear. Possibly before being steered towards irreversible mutilation and lifelong pain.

That gender-affirming care.

Readers may also wish to ponder how a similarly affirming approach might fare with other mental health issues – such as anorexia, with alarmingly cadaverous young women being told, “Yes, dear, you are every bit as fat as you imagine and should definitely continue starving yourself.”

A consequence of all this affirmation and declared solidarity is a hasty jumping to conclusions. A begging of questions. For instance:

The author of the above, Tess Kilwein – PhD, pronouns “she/they” – would have us believe, and would have her patients believe, that the most pressing and fundamental causes of woe are “bias,” “microaggressions,” and “anti-trans bills” – among which, laws that restrict women’s changing rooms and other intimate spaces to use by actual women, rather than delusional and/or predatory men.

And yet, a person with sexual dysmorphia – someone vehemently alienated from the physical reality of their sex – would presumably still feel that way even if stranded on a desert island. Just as they do now, when alone – say, in the shower or when making tiresome TikTok videos. Seems to me it ain’t the world that’s causing the problem.

This willingness to pretend – and to then applaud oneself as righteous and heroic – is, I’d suggest, a less than ideal tendency for a mental health professional. Someone to whom a person’s wellbeing, or hope of wellbeing, has been entrusted. Likewise, the rush to externalise all causes of misery. While social interaction – knowing that other people are likely to perceive you as you actually are, not as whatever it is you wish you were – may amplify the existing dissonance, such interaction doesn’t cause it. It isn’t the root of the problem.

That’s an, as they say, you thing.

In this supposedly therapeutic context, the words affirmation and validation translate as a willingness to lie. A willingness to indulge obvious bollocks and play along. And so, one might wonder how Dr Kilwein might affirm and validate some of the chaps seen here. Or this merry bedlamite, who violates women’s toilets and pushes his phone camera under the doors of occupied stalls in order to livestream to his admirers, all those affirming fans, the protests of his latest victim.

But, says Dr Kilwein, we must “validate without hesitation.” Because this practised, habitual dishonesty is, she says, “justice” and “courage.” And therefore, a basis for in-group status. At which point, the nakedly partisan activism of such people – and the abandonment of anything approaching detachment and objectivity – even basic curiosity – appears jarringly at odds with any claims of professionalism.

We are, however, assured that Dr Kilwein is a proponent of “bold storytelling.” Which is just what a patient needs when their perceptions of reality are wildly unreliable.

Any port in a storm. || Hot pursuit. || Not quite the intended optics. || Nicotine and oestrogen. || When brave knights battled snails. || You want one and you know it. || She’s not happy. || Helping hands required. || House-trained. || He likes to lick them. || Close enough. || You may need to move the seat back a tad. || A brief history of bubble gum. || Bit tight. || The bikini, I’m assuming, is purely for aerodynamic purposes. || The progressive retail experience, parts 623, and 624. Or, cause and effect. || Mystery unresolved. || It’s a San Francisco vibe. || Some overheating issues. || Insufficiently secured. || First, you need your own sand. || That Disney magic. || Can your toilet flush a rotisserie chicken? || Much effort, but minimal effect. || And finally, establishing fault before Dad hears about it.

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Via Toni Airaksinen, more from the hothouse world of pretentious agonising: 

The curriculum writer in question, Michael Lolkus, is keen to let the world know that he champions “equity- and social justice-oriented instructional practices.” “Whiteness,” it turns out, is something to be chided and “decentred” in favour of “ethnomathematics investigations.” “The lens of whiteness” we’re told, will be turned upon itself and “critical interrogation” will ensue.

Because, among the agonised, buzzwords must abound. Lest their status be in doubt.

And so, the paper, published in the Journal of Urban Mathematics Education – which I’d assumed would be more concerned with issues of urban planning and traffic management – contains much fretting and many assumptions:

Quite how those unspecified “white” ideas alter the rules of multiplication, percentages and other simple mathematical operations remains a thing of mystery. Indeed, as so often, the precise nature of this alleged corruption, this all-pervasive and befouling “whiteness” – a term used 157 times – is left to the imagination. Though much is pitched upon that mystery:

You see, Mr Lolkus fears he may be crushing brown-skinned students with his rampant, manly pallor.

“I am working to distance myself from whiteness,” says our fretful hero. Because “white educators like me need to embrace the burden of unpacking and dismantling white supremacy.” And so, Mr Lolkus will “grapple with my complicity in working within an educational system that… maintains white supremacy culture.”

White supremacy culture. In maths class. One of so many terms left intriguingly nebulous, but from which All Good Hearted People are expected to recoil with handkerchiefs clutched to their faces.

The nearest we get to gritty particulars is a brief stream of bald assertion:

“Representation” is touched on fleetingly, though the question of why black middle-school pupils being as yet unfamiliar with, say, Katherine Johnson or Euphemia Haynes might impair their comprehension of fractions is oddly unexplored. Or likewise, why any 10-year-old of East Asian ancestry might struggle with long division on account of hearing insufficient praise for Wu Wenjun’s algebraic topology.

Mr Lolkus laments his “positionality” as a structurer of lessons and “knower of… mathematical concepts,” wishing instead to be merely a “community member.” A somewhat fanciful flattening of “hierarchy,” and of values, and an abandonment of the teacher’s customary responsibility. This is followed by a suggestion that pupils, especially underperforming minority pupils – the party least familiar with the subject matter – should be put in charge of structuring lessons and the broader curriculum. A sure-fire recipe for success.

And then there’s the conceit that heroically brown pupils are performing “additional labour” by doing less well in class, or by not doing the work at all.

Regarding low expectations, do hold that thought. We’ll get to that in a minute.

Meanwhile, our educator offers a boldly modish analysis. Says Mr Lolkus, “My experiences as an upper middle-class white male informed every decision I made,” and by “positioning myself, a white male… as an authority figure” – which is to say, a teacher – this has somehow rendered minority students unable to do simple mathematics.

Or put another way, if a teacher feels equipped to teach a subject that they have studied for many years – such that they feel they are likely to know its particulars in more detail than middle-school children – then this is a cause for concern, a basis for ostentatious atonement. Provided the teacher in question is white, obviously.

And worse – more damning still – Mr Lolkus adds – or rather, confesses – that he grew up as a “heterosexual and cisgender male.”

And so, should some black pupils be struggling with middle-school mathematics, then this can only be explained by the fact that their teacher is pale-skinned and heterosexual. This, then, is the bleeding edge of “equity” scholarship. And the makings of a “social justice” revolution in knowledge transfer.

At which point, readers may wonder whether the institutional influence of so many scrupulously woke, racially fixated neurotics – creatures much like Mr Lolkus – may be among the other, perhaps more obvious causes of impairment and disparity.

Regarding those low expectations, denounced earlier, readers may recall a previous mention of Mr Lolkus and his peers, with our educators devising elaborate excuses for pupils who are undisciplined, selfish, and disruptive – provided said pupils are of a suitable hue.

Excuses in which maths classes are framed as an arena of “violence and trauma.” Specifically, the “trauma” of not knowing the answers, on account of not paying attention, and the “violence” of being corrected for being loud and disruptive in class while others are trying to work. According to our radical reinventors of education, attempts to teach calculus and geometry should be enlivened with shouting, tardiness, and lots of adorable “cacophony.”

On grounds that “whiteness” – say, expectations of accuracy, promptness, and diligence – is something that gets in the way of black students “maintaining their Blackness.”

So no low expectations there, obviously.

Incoming. || Ladies look away, I bring secret manly wisdom. || When justice is swift. || Those crunchy waves. || You want one and you know it. || An unlovely monkey. || All part and parcel of life on the range. || Retreat seems in order. || A fare to remember. || A mere $1.7 million. || Close enough, I think. || Scenes of sporting innovation. || Inauthentic goods. || Tongue action. || Question asked. || In heavy irony news, she demanded respect. || Australian Robin. || Orson Welles’ Macbeth, 1948. || The best they could find for the job. || Parking scenes. || Terms and conditions apply. || The progressive retail experience, part 622. || Anti-matter and other expensive substances. || Playmate declined. Note the weariness of Dad. || Adding face. || Those fat blues. || I fear for his upholstery.

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